Chapter 2 - The Sound of the Elevator
Adrian didn't wait to hear another word.
He shoved the walnut chair back with such violence that it overturned, crashing against the floorboards with a booming echo.
He sprinted out of the conference room, his heavy coat flying open, tearing down the carpeted executive hallway.
James Holloway was standing by the reception desk, pen in hand, looking startled.
“Adrian? What about the recording fees—”
“Where did she go?” Adrian roared, his voice shaking the glass display cases.
“The south elevator,” the secretary stammered, dropping her phone. “Just thirty seconds ago.”
Adrian hit the elevator call button repeatedly, but the brass indicator above the doors showed the car already passing the fifth floor toward the ground level.
He cursed, turning hard toward the fire stairs.
He threw the heavy steel door open and launched himself down the flights, his shoes striking the concrete in a frantic, thundering rhythm.
Four flights. Six flights. Eight flights.
His lungs burned, but the fire in his chest was nothing compared to the suffocating terror that he had let her walk away carrying everything that mattered.
He burst through the lobby fire doors just in time to see the revolving glass doors sweep shut.
Outside on LaSalle Street, a gray winter drizzle was turning the sidewalks to slick slate.
Adrian pushed through the doors, scanning the sea of umbrellas and yellow cabs.
Across the boulevard, Claire was stepping into the back seat of a black town car, her cream sweater a solitary beacon against the bleak gray mist.
“Claire!” he shouted, stepping off the curb into the roaring midday traffic.
A delivery van blared its horn, tires screeching as the driver swerved around him, splashing dirty slush across his slacks.
Adrian ignored the horn, running toward the island divider.
“Claire! Stop the car!”
The driver of the black sedan put the vehicle in gear, the brake lights flashing once before pulling smoothly into the flow of traffic heading toward Lake Shore Drive.
Through the rain-streaked rear window, Adrian caught a fleeting glimpse of Claire’s pale profile.
She was staring straight ahead, her hands folded over her lower stomach, not looking back even once.
She had given him four months to listen.
May you like
She had given him twenty minutes in the conference room.
And now, she had vanished into a city of four million people, leaving him standing in the freezing rain with empty hands.
